Bionote
Stefano Mintchev is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Robotics at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He completed his Ph.D. in Bioinspired Robotics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Italy, in 2014. As a postdoc at EPFL, he explored design and manufacturing principles of morpho-functional drones. In 2018, he co-founded Foldaway Haptics, serving as CTO until 2020, when he joined ETH Zurich. Stefano and his team work at the nexus of robotics and environmental science, studying scalable robotic methods for environmental monitoring. Their innovations aim to provide critical measurements and insights across spatial and temporal scales essential for protecting, managing, and restoring Earth’s natural resources.
Presentation Abstract
Human activities are driving an unprecedented loss of biodiversity, with profound consequences for ecosystems, economies, public health, and the long-term sustainability of life on Earth. Efforts to mitigate this crisis are hindered by a lack of biodiversity data at relevant ecological and political scales. Key challenges include: (i) monitoring biases toward specific taxa and accessible ecosystems; and (ii) limited scalability due to labour-intensive data collection methods. In this presentation, I will demonstrate how aerial robots equipped with robust sensory-motor skills for physical interaction can enable high-throughput collection of environmental DNA (eDNA) in terrestrial ecosystems. Drone-based eDNA surveys have the potential to transform biodiversity monitoring in forests and agricultural fields, supporting more effective conservation strategies and sustainable land-use practices.